Tuesday, January 19, 2010

This morning I neglected to mention the huge numbers of armedforces, mainly from the US, running rampant through the streetsof Port-au-Prince and much resentment expressed by the populace.They've already begun shooting people. Nothing surprise's me, andthere will surely be more sent about this developing situation. -Ed

President Obama promised $100 million in aid to Haiti on January 14, 2009. AKentucky couple won $128 million in a Powerball lottery on December 24,2009. The richest nation in the history of the world is giving powerballmoney to a neighbor with tens of thousands of deaths already?

Point Two. Have You Ever Been Without Water?

Hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti have had no access to clean watersince the quake hit. Have you ever been in a place that has no water? Haveyou ever felt the raw fear in the gut when you are not sure where your nextdrink of water is going to come from? People can live without food for along time. Without water? A very short time. In hot conditions people canbecome dehydrated in an hour. Lack of water puts you into shock and startsbreaking down the body right away. People can die within hours if they areexposed to heat without water.

Point Three. Half the People in Haiti are Kids and They Were Hungry Beforethe Quake.

Over half the population of Haiti is 15 years old or younger. And they werehungry before the quake. A great friend, Pere Jean-Juste, explained to methat most of the people of Haiti wake every day not knowing how they willeat dinner that day. So there are no reserves, no soup kitchens, nopantries, nothing for most. Hunger started immediately.

Point Four. A Toxic Stew of Death is Brewing.

Take hundreds of thousands of people. Shock them with a major earthquake anddozens of aftershocks. Take away their homes and put them out in the open.Take away all water and food and medical care. Sit them out in the open fordays with scorching temperatures. Surround them with tens of thousands ofdecaying bodies. People have to drink. So they are drinking bad water. Theyare getting sick. There is no place to go. What happens next?

Point Five. Aid is Sitting at the Airport.

While millions suffer, humanitarian aid is sitting at the Port au Princeairport. Why? People are afraid to give it out for fear of provoking riots.Which is worse?

Point Six. Haiti is Facing A Crisis Beyond Our Worst Nightmares.

"I think it is going to be worse than anyone still understands." RichardDubin, vice president of Haiti shipping lines told the New York Times. He isso right. Unless there is a major urgent change in the global response, theworld may look back and envy those tens of thousands who died in the quake.

Wake up world!

Bill is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a longtime human rights advocate in Haiti. Quigley77@gmail.com

On Wednesday, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned aruling made by a federal trial judge that would have allowed limitedtelevision coverage of a trial that will decide the fate of California'sProposition 8. The trial, which is currently proceeding in San Francisco, isone of the most significant civil rights cases of our time. The plaintiffsare seeking to overturn a ballot initiative that makes same-sex marriageillegal in California.

It was unusual that the Supreme Court even decided to hear this case. Thehigh court takes very few cases. It generally decides issues about which thestate or federal courts are in conflict or cases that raise importantquestions of federal law. Yet relying on the Supreme Court's "supervisorypower" over the lower courts, the five conservative justices - Roberts,Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy - joined in an unsigned 17-page decisionand chided Chief Judge Vaughn Walker for seeking to broadcast the trialwithout a sufficient notice period for public comment.

Justice Breyer wrote in the dissent joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg andSotomayor that he could find no other case in which the Supreme Court hadintervened in the procedural aspects of local judicial administration.Indeed, Breyer cited a case in which Scalia wrote, "I do not see the basisfor any direct authority to supervise lower courts."

Moreover, in the comment period that Walker did allow, he received 138,574comments, and all but 32 favored transmitting the proceedings.

The majority concluded that the same-sex marriage opponents would suffer"irreparable harm" if the trial were broadcast to five other federal courtsaround the country. But all the witnesses who allegedly might be intimidatedby the camera were experts or Prop 8 advocates who had already appeared ontelevision or the Internet during the campaign.

No one presented empirical data to establish that the mere presence ofcameras would negatively impact the judicial process, Breyer wrote. He citeda book that I authored with veteran broadcast journalist David Dow, "Camerasin the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice." It describesstudies that found no harm from the camera, and one which found thatwitnesses "who faced an obvious camera, provided answers that were morecorrect, lengthier and more detailed."

The five justices who denied camera coverage noted at the outset that theywould not express "any view on whether [federal] trials should bebroadcast." Toward the end of their decision, however, they stated thatsince the trial judge intended to broadcast witness testimony, "[t]his caseis therefore not a good one for a pilot program."

In my opinion, it is no accident that the five majority justices are theconservatives who, in all likelihood, oppose same-sex marriage. Why don'tthose who oppose same-sex marriage want people to see this trial?

Perhaps they are mindful of the sympathy engendered by televised images ofanother civil rights struggle. "It was hard for people watching at home notto take sides," David Halberstam wrote about Little Rock in The Fifties."There they were, sitting in their living rooms in front of their owntelevision sets watching orderly black children behaving with great dignity,trying to obtain nothing more than a decent education, the most elemental ofAmerican birthrights, yet being assaulted by a vicious mob of poor whites."

The conservative justices may think that televising this trial will have thesame effect on the public. Witnesses are describing their love for eachother in deeply emotional terms. Religious fundamentalists who oppose themwill testify about their interpretation of scripture. Gay marriage is one ofthe hot button issues of our time. Passions run high on both sides. This isnot a jury trial in which jurors might be affected by the camera or acriminal case where the life or liberty of the defendant is at stake.

In spite of what the conservative majority claims, the professionalwitnesses are not likely to be cowed by the camera. Modern broadcasttechnology would allow the telecast without affecting the proceedings in thecourtroom.

There is overwhelming public interest in this case. It will affect the dailylives of millions of people. The decision denying limited broadcast coverageat this point effectively eliminates any possibility that it will be allowedbefore the trial is over. The conservative judges are using proceduralexcuses to push this critical issue back into the closet.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law andco-author, with David Dow, of "Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and thePursuit of Justice."

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Swing Riots Concert July 17th

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles, 1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

SwingRiots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present SwingRiots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime SwingRiots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it! --Ross Altman